


Track 1 - Improper Therapeutic Practices/The Bullet

by annabeth



Category: Gravitation
Genre: Cheating, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Spoilers for the Anime, Yuki's self-loathing, canon rape/child abuse referenced, improper therapeutic practices, interrupted sex scene, mention of past child sexual abuse, mention of past rape, or is that what Tohma's really doing?, unsexy metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:15:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23841352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annabeth/pseuds/annabeth
Summary: Tohma is trying to tell Yuki something important when Yuki vomits blood. Where will things go from there?
Relationships: Seguchi Tohma/Yuki Eiri, Shindou Shuuichi/Yuki Eiri
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Track 1 - Improper Therapeutic Practices/The Bullet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blownwish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blownwish/gifts).



> Omg, I started this fic EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO. I was in college! (Ah, my misspent youth...) I abandoned it at around 730 words, but I dusted it off recently and polished it and wrote almost 3K more. So, you can probably tell where I left off 18 years ago and where I added to it (I hope I've improved as a writer in that time!).

Yuki swirled the amber liquid around in his glass, listening idly to the ice clinking against the sides. Tohma leaned forward, dark eyes strikingly visible under the fringe of platinum bangs.

"I always protect those dear to me, you realize," he spoke finally. Yuki kept his eyes on the drink. He stretched his long legs out and tried to direct his mind onto the new novel that was shifting shape in his mind. Tohma looked up from his lap, light reflecting off the lenses in his glasses.

"I know you’re trying to block out what I’m saying to you. But this is important. I _always_ protect those closest to me. Anyone who threatens them—is not necessarily safe."

Yuki tried to ignore the dangerous lilt that had entered his brother-in-law’s voice. His bare feet were sweaty and sticking lightly to the hardwood floor. He kept his eyes lowered, refusing to look at Tohma, even though every nerve in his body was over-aware of the other man in the room. His chest beaded with sweat beneath his blue silk shirt, the heat of Tohma’s gaze almost unbearable.

"Tohma, I appreciate the underlying warning," he glanced up, feral golden eyes finally meeting Tohma’s, "but this is _my_ choice. Do not stand in my way." Yuki twisted the drink between his hands. Tohma smiled, eyes crinkling up. Despite the radiance of his face and hair, he exuded a dark, brooding presence which slowly filled any room.

"It has been quite… difficult, for me. To step aside and watch you toy with that child." The smile slowly slipped off his face. "And that child is far too inquisitive. I suggest that you discourage him before someone else is forced to do so."

"Tohma, what is it that you’re really worried about?"

"I wonder…" Tohma said, as he fell back against the couch. Yuki felt his fingers becoming icy. The couch was scratchy against his spine, and the T.V. was too loud for his ears. A rushing filled them, and his stomach roiled unpleasantly. His hair was damp and he felt something akin to either pleasure—or pain. Tohma stood up, began pacing the room, dark eyes never drifting far from Yuki. After several moments he came up behind the couch that Yuki was arranged on. He put both hands on the back of the couch, one on either side of Yuki’s bent head, then he leaned down and brushed his lips against Yuki’s ear.

"If I hear of that child asking any more questions—" he took the lobe between his teeth and—instead of biting down, as Yuki was expecting—his tongue flicked against the tender flesh. Yuki’s eyes flew up, as if he could see behind him.

""What will you—what _are_ you doing?" Yuki exclaimed in a hoarse whisper. Tohma’s breath formed steam on the back of Yuki’s neck as he dislodged the earlobe from between Tohma’s lips. In response, Tohma’s mouth dusted over Yuki’s neck.

"I’m going to teach you what it’s like to _really_ make love," Tohma murmured. Yuki shivered.

"You ought to _warn_ me first, or at least tell me what’s going on," Yuki ground out. "You've never wanted this from me. What are you trying to accomplish?"

"Consider yourself warned," Tohma said, "that I will do anything and everything in my power to have you. Play with the child if you must—but remember this. _That_ is only a game. _This_ is your only reality," and his teeth grazed the arch of Yuki’s spine. Yuki tried to focus, but beneath the searing pleasure and the blurring plaguing his eyes he couldn’t quite grasp anything anymore. Tohma's words turned wobbly in his brain even as his vision wavered. The glass got slippery and slid from his fingers, hitting the floor with a sharp crack and a tinkle of the ice pouring out. He gulped, a hand covering his mouth. The whiskey spread over the smooth floor and then, a drop of ruby hit the expanding puddle.

Another drop followed the first. Yuki heaved into his whitening fingers, red liquid pooling inside of them and leaking out. Tohma paused, then straightened.

"Eiri-san, what’s the matter?" His congeniality returned suddenly as he saw the blood mingling with the hard liquor.

"Are you all right?" he asked, the slightly deadly quality to his voice fading into one of concern, even as Yuki's vision tunneled.

:::

Yuki lay in bed, following "doctor's orders," and listened to Tohma in his kitchen, preparing a cup of tea. How he longed for a cigarette, even though those had been expressly forbidden to him, at least for a few days. And it was weird, too, having Tohma in his kitchen.

Yuki had persuaded Shuichi that he was fine now, so Shuichi had gone to practice in the recording studio with Hiro and Fujisaki, and so it was less likely he'd come home any time soon—working on new lyrics always kept him busy, no matter how execrable those lyrics usually were.

Tohma wasn't the type of man to just lower himself to menial tasks like making tea, but for Yuki, he'd always been willing to debase himself, to carry Yuki's pain around as if it were his own—as if he could understand what Yuki had been feeling all those long days ago, when he'd held him the last time Yuki had really cried.

Lying in bed with nothing to do left too much space in Yuki's brain, space that filled up with those thoughts of dark days in New York, alone with Kitazawa, then later, alone with a bloody puddle spreading on the floor and a gun in his hands. What would he have done if Tohma had not been there?

Hell, what would he be doing now, if Tohma weren't here? Probably sitting at his laptop smoking a cigarette with a glass of whiskey at his elbow. Probably throwing up more blood. Fuck, it wasn't likely _Shuichi_ could actually do anything.

Likely because Yuki refused to let Shuichi dictate what he did—something he'd tried to refuse Tohma, but the truth was, there was still a scared little boy screaming deep down in his soul that only Tohma could soothe, and it had pretty much always been that way, since New York. As much as he wanted Shuichi to fill that void, it was Tohma—always Tohma.

Yuki rolled onto his side and contemplated the wall; really, he was contemplating the meaning of a life that had nothing meaningful in it at all. He was nothing more than a mass growing out of healthy tissue; a cancer that ate at everything Tohma tried to do for him and left nothing in return.

If he let himself think about New York—if he let himself _remember_ , and think about Kitazawa too—he ended up in a dark spiral with only darker thoughts for company, the major one being: _Tohma should have killed me. It would have been kinder for_ me _to die._

Now, though, he supposed he had "that child," as Tohma called him, and if nothing else, there was a devious sort of glee to telling Shuichi off. Even if he liked him—genuinely did, more fool him—he could do nothing for Shuichi but taint him. Better he kept himself in reserve.

Better he only let Tohma see what truly settled beneath. The grimy ocean kraken that was what was left of his soul. Yuki let out a heavy sigh, and his lungs ached as they expanded and contracted. His throat was scratchy from the blood that had come up, pooled in his hands.

"Eiri-san?" Tohma asked, and Yuki shrugged one shoulder. "I've brought your tea. Do you want to sit up—"

"I can do it," Yuki groused, and slowly emerged from his blanket. If Shuichi had been standing there, he would have minded if his hair was sticking up. He would have been overly conscious of how he looked, because Shuichi thought he was cool… but Tohma knew better. It made Yuki feel small, so very small, inside, to remember just what Tohma knew about him. And yet Tohma kept coming around, kept blowing off Mika-chan in favor of following Yuki home, or trailing Yuki to bars, or everything else he did in the dark, in secret, to smooth Yuki's path through life.

He'd killed Kitazawa, he knew that. He'd remembered that much. But he may have killed more people than just that one sorry excuse for a sack of meat. _(But you loved him, whispered a treacherous part of his mind.)_ How had he escaped with his life, unscathed? How had he come to be here, back in Japan, with no one the wiser, able to make a living for himself as a popular author of love stories?

The only love Yuki had ever known was that from Kitazawa—that poisonous vine that had entangled him—and from Tohma, which smothered. Yet he kept coming back to suffocate, as if that was the only time he could really breathe.

Tohma had done something, of course. Tohma had pulled some string until it unravelled all the way to the top, and he'd pulled Yuki from the cleansing fire he deserved, dragged him back to safety, and refused to allow him to burn again.

Yuki knew that Tohma had done something to Taki-kun from ASK. He didn't know what—and he didn't much care about himself, but Shuichi was blameless—and yet he knew Tohma would never let an insult or a threat stick to Yuki. Tohma would gleefully drop Shuichi in a pit and bury him, but he'd never permit anything to touch Yuki.

"You should have let me die," Yuki said, his voice guttural even to his own ears. He wasn't even particularly making sense—the doctor had assured him he was never in any mortal danger—but he kept rewinding that VHS that held his past on it in gloomy, gory colors, and it was him on that floor, hand reaching out, blood spilled and spreading, soaking his blonde hair. His hands that were ghastly-pale, his lips that were numb, and Kitazawa held the gun.

Kitazawa, unzipping his pants. Kitazawa whispering, "Hello, my little Eiri-chan. Wouldn't you like a taste?" and pulling the gun out, and shooting Yuki dead from point blank range with bullets that could never, ever miss.

And yet, even after all that, Tohma had swooped down, covered Yuki's mouth when he retched. All those years later and that's a detail seared so deeply into the tape that it didn't play smoothly anymore, how Tohma had actually reached out, had caught at Yuki's vomit like he was Yuki's own father.

"I don't know whatever you could mean," Tohma said, placing the tea gently on the nightstand. He came in close, so close that when he breathed, Yuki could practically feel it on his skin. He sat down on the bed, and Yuki had to struggle to hold himself still, to keep from falling against Tohma's superior strength and letting him soothe it all away, the way he always did.

But that wasn't right anymore, was it? It was Shuichi's turn now. It was Shuichi he was supposed to lean on. But he could never do that. Shuichi didn't know his true weakness—that it wasn't the killing he minded, but the _dying_.

"In New York," Yuki said, his voice raspy. Was that from the scraped throat, or something else? His throat, of course—he decided. "I was dying by degrees. Why did you even bother?"

"I'll always bother for you, Eiri-san," Tohma said, with the straight matter-of-factness of a razor blade. He wouldn't dissemble in any situation that involved Yuki. Yuki hated that about him.

_You love him._

"I wanted to die," Yuki said. He scrubbed a hand through his freshly washed hair—what kind of person was Tohma, anyway, to strip him down and wash him and never show the slightest bit of interest? But Yuki was certain that a torch for him glowed in that serene soul somewhere. Hadn't Tohma been saying something like that just before Yuki had puked blood? It was difficult to remember. "I _needed_ to die."

"What makes you say that?" Tohma asked quietly, so calm even in the face of this monstrous admission.

"I was the evil snake in that garden," Yuki said. "None of what happened, happens without me."

"Do you think you were the first, Eiri, or the last?" Tohma asked. "Think it over carefully."

Yuki twitched in impatience, flipping the bedclothes back, forcing Tohma to flinch, just the slightest, as the blanket spread across his lap. "I was both," he said. "Both." He could feel a tear trying to surface, a blot in his eye.

"There is never a first, with a man like that," Tohma said softly. "But you _were_ the last. It was never you, Eiri. Never you."

Yuki wanted to cry, but he couldn't—he couldn't cry another tear—so he lunged forward and grabbed Tohma's shoulders, throwing him down backward onto the bed and covering him with his own slender body. He wasn't thick or muscled, and he didn't work out—just an author of novels silly housewives loved—but he was wiry, and wily.

So maybe he surprised Tohma when he locked their lips together. Maybe, but more likely Tohma had known about this desire of Yuki's for years—long before Yuki acknowledged it. Perhaps even long before Yuki realized it.

In any case, Tohma opened his mouth readily enough, and while Yuki was half-expecting Tohma to push him off, to say something pithy and pitiful and wise, he wasn't prepared for the shock of Tohma's tongue as it slid along his own.

Yuki sighed, deep down in places he hadn't been aware still existed, and relaxed against Tohma. In response, Tohma moved, slowly but inexorably, and switched their positions so that Yuki was on his back. Tohma was gentle, but he was absolute in his desires, and when he nudged his thigh between Yuki's thighs, Yuki knew he was meant to feel the hard erection that ground against him.

Tohma was telling him something. Tohma was, with one gyration of his hips, saying to Yuki, _it's okay_. Saying that Yuki could have whatever he wanted, just like always.

And just like that Yuki felt disgusted with himself, and he pitied Tohma. He wanted his name breathed from those lips in passion-infused exhalations, he wanted that cock—oh, God, he wanted it to tear him open and let the pus run out—but this wasn't the way he wanted it.

He pushed at Tohma's chest. He ripped his mouth away.

"It was just a joke," he said, and kept his eyes averted even as Tohma let out exactly one ragged breath and sat up, pulled away.

"Nothing to do with you is ever a laughing matter to me," Tohma said. He folded his hands in his lap as prim as you please, as if to defy the hard bulge that jutted against the neatly interlaced fingers.

"What will it take?" Yuki asked on a gasp. "For you to give up, to just let me rot away inside?"

"It would take my life," Tohma said. Then he lowered his voice. "Eiri."

Just his name, dropping from those lips in a whisper yet it fell like a bomb when it landed. Yuki's own hard cock quivered and just like that, he couldn't deny himself anymore.

"Tohma…" he breathed, and then he was in those strong arms, and the feeling of rot slipped away and he felt blessedly nothing.

This time, when Tohma kissed him, Yuki was prepared for it: the sudden, unfamiliar sensation of his tongue, the alien landscape of a mouth he wasn't used to kissing; the silk of the hair that filtered through his fingers; the spicy undertone to Tohma's scent. He could smell Tohma's cologne, but that little bit of spice—that was Tohma himself.

He inhaled, sucking it in, and tangled his fingers in that fine blond hair; nipped at Tohma's lips and sucked on Tohma's tongue. Somewhere, that child that had been screaming stopped, fell asleep, and Yuki felt more peace than he could remember ever having felt.

Even as Tohma nudged their cocks together, the muscle of Tohma's thigh making it feel like steel against Yuki's leg, Yuki was trying to figure out what was happening. He couldn't deny that it was doing something for him beyond simply scratching a sexual itch, but he wasn't sure what _else_ was going on.

When the pieces fell into place—that Tohma would do _anything_ for him, up to and including trying out a novel sort of therapy wherein he fucked Yuki instead to make up for Kitazawa—Yuki felt panic bubbling to the surface, and he twisted his head away.

"I know what you're doing," he said. "It makes sense now."

"Give me your mouth," Tohma said. No, it was more like an order. But Yuki kept his head turned. "What am I doing, Eiri-san? Tell me. I thought I was kissing you, but you seem to be under the misapprehension that something else is occurring."

"Kitazawa—" Yuki began, and Tohma ground his cock against Yuki's. It made him gasp and left him unable to finish his sentence.

"Don't say his name," Tohma growled. "Eiri-san, I know you won't allow yourself to forget, but I want to scream when I hear his name, after what he did to you. Can't you think of _my_ feelings?"

Typical of Tohma, to turn the tables like that; to draw attention away from Yuki's pain, like waving the red flag at the bull as the bullrider runs from him.

"I'm used goods," Yuki said, forging on, determined to stop this madness—it didn't matter if he _wanted_ Tohma, he didn't _deserve_ him. "You can't wipe that stain away, Tohma. You can't fuck it away. It doesn't matter if you stick your dick in the same place, it won't change anything."

Tohma let out a gusty sigh and pulled back. "If that's what you think, Eiri-san, then you really don't understand a thing. And you a writer, a manipulator of words."

Yuki bit his lip. He wanted Tohma desperately, but he didn't want a pity fuck, and he couldn't allow himself to enjoy it, anyway. So he lay on the bed, silent as a corpse, until Tohma stood up.

"Drink your tea, Eiri," he said, and Yuki listened to his footsteps retreat.

He didn't drink the tea, and he couldn't sleep. And when the door opened and closed, he allowed his eyes the relief of being shut.

By the time Shuichi came back, Yuki had almost managed to drive the feel and taste of Tohma from his mind. He was almost able to pretend that he hadn't almost fucked his brother-in-law, that he'd been so close to truly cheating on Shuichi.

But that night, even as he buried himself into Shuichi's willing body, he was remembering Tohma—but not his body. What he remembered was the emotion involved, and how he'd been cheating on Shuichi all along.


End file.
